This Is 40 (2012)

This Is 40 Synopsis

Five years after writer/director Judd Apatow introduced us to Pete and Debbie in Knocked Up, Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann reprise their roles as a husband and wife both approaching a milestone meltdown in This Is 40, an unfiltered, comedic look inside the life of an American family.

After years of marriage, Pete lives in a house of all females: wife Debbie and their two daughters, eight-year-old Charlotte (Iris Apatow) and 13-year-old Sadie (Maude Apatow). As he struggles to keep his record label afloat, he and Debbie must figure out how to forgive, forget and enjoy the rest of their lives...before they kill each other.

In his fourth directorial outing, Apatow's new comedy captures what it takes for one family to flourish in the middle of a lifetime together.

What emerges is a deeply honest portrait of the challenges and rewards of marriage and parenthood in the modern age. Through the filmmaker's unblinking lens, we follow one couple's three-week navigation of sex and romance, career triumphs and financial hardships, aging parents and maturing children.

It’s been a while since movie fans encountered such a stacked week for release. Several Academy Award winners are in the pile, as well as some favorites from directors Peter Jackson and Judd Apatow. Read on to learn about some of this week’s best releases, and maybe even a few that slipped under your radar.

Written, produced, and directed by Judd Apatow and starring the rest of his family, This is 40 hits many true notes as well as some suitably hilarious ones. If you really loved the film, or have been wanting to catch it, This is 40 will be available on Blu-ray and DVD beginning on March 22. Now, Universal Studios Home Entertainment has put together an exclusive behind-the-scenes clip for fans.

This is 40, Judd Apatow’s midlife crisis comedy starring his two daughters and his wife, is coming to Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download fairly soon. Universal Studios is putting together the set, which will be available in hard copy in a Blu-ray combo pack or a DVD set on March 22.

You can poke fun at Judd Apatow all you want for continuing to cast his daughters in his movies-- he's still not gonna stop. In fact, he's considering making it a full trilogy of films in which Iris and Maude play the same characters, who started out as cherubic kids in Knocked Up

I can't even imagine how hard it must be keeping a straight face on the set of a Judd Apatow movie. The writer/director regularly brings together the funniest people acting in movies today and not only does he give them funny scripts to work from, he also lets them improvise and make the material the best it can be. And as professional as the stars are, it's totally understandable that they would occasionally break down and just start guffawing.

To promote his Knocked-Up spin-off This is 40, Apatow has been unveiling a steady stream of deleted scenes. There was the awkward double date, and Billie Joe Armstrong's pitch of a violent new sound sure to hurt his record sales. Now a new clip has surfaced featuring Megan Fox, Jason Segel and Chris O'Dowd.

Judd Apatow has included at least one celebrity cameo in all of the films he has directed since Knocked Up, and his latest, This is 40, is no different. At one point in the movie some of the characters are at a concert when Billy Joe Armstrong, the lead singer of Green Day, makes an appearance. Armstrong does get a few lines in the movie, but the truth is that he was originally in it for a lot longer - but now that deleted scene has arrived online.

Judd Apatow doesn't make short movies. His the first film he directed, The 40 Year Old Virgin, clocks in at an hour and 56 minutes long - and that's his shortest one to date. His latest, This is 40 - which came into theaters this past weekend, doesn't break the trend that Apatow has started either, and is a full two hours and 14 minutes long.

Tis the season to hear the people sing, as evidenced by the numbers being reported for the anticipated box office take for Les Miserables, which arrived in theaters yesterday for its Christmas release. Tom Hooper's adaptation of the popular stage musical isn't the only film with cause to celebrate. Django Unchained and The Hobbit also did well.

With Christmas right around the corner and American audiences perhaps slightly more distracted by the specter of having just one weekend left to finish getting those last minute gifts, movie theaters were relatively quiet. That left four new arrivals with stockings full of coal at the pre-holiday box office.

Often, this job means analyzing the moments when current events affect pop-culture, and vice versa. This week, because of the tragic shooting in Connecticut, Hollywood has two unfortunate and unforeseen instances where films heading to theaters are going to address gun violence and murder, and one of the directors is taking a bold step to address the issue before it becomes a controversy.

It’s hard to slap a two sentence logline on Judd Apatow’s This is 40. Rather than being about a specific crisis or conflict, the style is instead more free flowing, the film working to encapsulate what it means to be 40 years old with a family in the modern world. And that’s no accident: Apatow wants you to feel what it’s like to spend a week in the life with his characters.

Going to the movies on Christmas Day is usually thought of as a tradition for Jews, or anybody else not celebrating the holiday who's got the day off. But really, no matter how you're spending the holiday, there's probably going to be a time that you want to get out of the house and away from the family or friends you've gathered with-- or maybe you want to take them with you, but just get to a place where you don't have to talk to them much.

With so many titles to choose from, Netflix Instant's library can be overwhelming. And so we offer this biweekly column as a tool to cut through the clutter by highlighting some now streaming titles that pair nicely with the latest theatrical releases.

After weeks of skating by with one movie here, two there, the studios saw fit to dump a full on smorgasbord on us all at once. No time or words to spare. We’ve got Jack Reacher, guilt trips, manhunts, mid-life crises, and acrobats

One of Pete and Debbie's most memorable moments in Knocked Up was when Pete casually asks his wife if she's up for sex, while the two of them are getting ready for bed, to which she responds with a grunt and the admission that she's "just really constipated." The scene showcases the humor in the reality of marriage for many of the more candid couples. And it's this scene that's used at the start of the new Red Band trailer for This is 40.

From the looks of this clip, Fox has been cast to serve a similar purpose to hers in Friends With Kids, where her youth, flexibility, and perky breasts became a point of envy to the comedy's older female lead. In the red band featurette, Leslie Mann's age-fearing Debbie full-on feels up Fox over these anxieties. And here we see how the dudes react, which is to say predictably by gawking.

Paul Rudd and Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann reprise their roles as this fiercely funny and frequently feuding pair. The film's first trailer gave us a hint to the marital mayhem the movie has to offer, and a behind-the-scenes clip offered a look at the return of Jason Segel's flirtatious physical trainer. Now the newly released clip delivers one of the couple's more intimate moments.

Though Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann are the main focus of This is 40, which writer-director Judd Apatow is calling a sort-of sequel to Knocked Up, one more character from that movie will be making a return appearance. From what we know there's no sign of his old roommate Ben, played by Seth Rogen, but Jason Segel's character "Jason" will be returning

Judd Apatow's This is 40 could be one of the funniest commies of the holiday season-- or the most uncomfortably personal movie this side of, well, Apatow's last movie Funny People. The writer-director has always been known for drawing from his real life for his movies, but This is 40 probably crosses a new line

Since making his directorial debut back in 2005, Judd Apatow has really matured as a filmmaker - and you don't really have to look further than the plots of his movies to see it. His first, The 40 Year Old Virgin, was smart and clever, but also featured themes about growing up (even if the entire movie was about a group of fully grown men)...

It’s a shame to waste half a 30 second spot on old footage - especially since we see none of the great supporting cast including Albert Brooks, Melissa McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd - but it’s probably not a bad idea to remind audiences that This is 40 is a continuation of the Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann sub-plot from the writer/director’s hugely successful comedy starring Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl.

Judd Apatow is calling it the "sort-of-sequel to Knocked Up," but we're just calling it one of the easiest movies to look forward to at the end of this year. This Is 40, Apatow's first film since Funny People, is coming to theaters December 21, and now a new trailer has dropped over at Yahoo! Movies

One of my absolute favorite moments in Knocked Up is a brief scene between Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann, which takes place in the bathroom and has Rudd putting the offer of sex on the table, to which Mann responds with a grunt and an announcement that she's constipated. It's honest and funny and a little bit disturbing all at once. The poster for Judd Apatow's This is Forty seems to revisit that scene in a slightly graphic way.

Described as the “sort-of sequel to Knocked Up,” the movie features the sort-of happily married couple Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann played in that comedy, only they are approaching the Big 4-0 and re-evaluating all of the decisions they made over the course of their relationship.

A few hours ago I published my recap of the Bourne Legacy footage shown today during the Universal Pictures presentation at CinemaCon, but that was far from the only movie that the studio had on display at the convention. Over the course of two hours they showed off footage from every single film that remains on their 2012 calendar and beyond, including outrageous comedies and Oscar-hopeful dramas. And I’m here to tell you about them.

Greetings from Las Vegas, Cinema Blend fans! I have arrived in the legendary city of sin for this year's CinemaCon, the annual event where the biggest names and studios in Hollywood travel out to the desert to present footage from their biggest upcoming films. I'll be here all week to report on all of the insanely cool stuff that I get to see, and while the convention doesn't actually start until tomorrow, I already have a lot of awesome things to show you

The spin-off of Judd Apatow's smash hit Knocked Up has not only secured an awards friendly December 21, 2012 release date but also has us eagerly anticipating the chance to catch up with the lovable characters a few years down the line. Here's our first look at Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann and the Apatow offspring in This is Forty.